October 28, 2009

This week I received a google wave invite from Andressa Cardoso, a talented colleague from Goiania, and have been playing with it ever since. After having watched many youtube videos and having read Orli's great posts about it (although she says she's not very enthusiastic about Googlewave) I feel less lost. :)

My objective now is to add fellow teachers as my contacts in order to test the tool and create meaningful waves.

This is an interesting document shared by Orli about Google wave extensions.

Just learned about this new VISUAL search engine from Technology Tidbits and had the same impression he had, I was hypnotised by it. Enter a term in the search box ( I typed Brazil) and click Oamos search. You'll see images, links, sounds and finally word bubbles which will take you to other tags.

I also looked for anamariacult and had fun watching what the web world has about me.

Just found this site in Dkapuler's blog "Technology Tidbits" and have been thinking how we could use this. It's fun to create this crazy flower where you add objects, words, mix music and can share it via twitter, facebook or even send it to someone by e-mail.

Have just found out about this great tool which can be added to class blogs. Any student surfing the blog, when encountering a word they don't understand can double-click on the word and get a definition. I found it fantastic. Try it out. Click on any word in this blog and see what happens.

Now that our school is about to update our e-boards with the ActivInspire software, I´ve produced a series of simple tutorials showing how to add captions, use the camera, hide texts and images and so on. If you use the software or plan to, feel free to watch the tutorials.

October 15, 2009

The black microphone looks less childish than the yellow one. It's 34,49 pounds (including VAT) but unfortunately it's only sold in the UK. A colleague of mine who is living in England at the moment will try to purchase it and I might write a review about it in January. They have also created another model of microphone (Easi-speak Pro) which looks more professional and can be found in their E-CATALOGUE p.101.

This is another product by TTS I'd love to have but cannot purchase at the moment. I had seen it in a video about an English teacher using it to record students in class. What I liked aboutit is how easy it is to record and dowload it to your computer.

October 11, 2009

THanks to Russell Stannard and Larry Ferlazzo, I´ve reencountered this amazing site which offers wonderful activities for EFL learners. It looks wonderful in e-boards and many activities include sound, images, words and actions.

October 8, 2009

Inspired by Nik Peachey´s excellent post (image above) about creating animated music videos, I decided to give it a go myself. Of course my stick figure drawings are poor compared to what you´ll find in youtube but it can give you an idea of what can be done with any kind of drawing.

The task Nik suggested was to select a song you like, draw pictures for the lyrics, take pictures ( I scanned the pictures instead) and assemble everything in Windows Movie Maker.

How to do this kind of task w/ students?

My suggestion is

Ask the class to select a song they like with good lyrics (or select one yourself)

I've just made a VOICETHREAD in which all sts can practise recording picture description. The recording can be done in class or for HW. For the first slide I invite teachers to record a tip to help sts describe pictures and the other slides are for sts to try it out.http://voicethread.com/share/655485/

To record, click COMMENT, and RECORD (you need a microphone). You can also type your tip instead of recording it (if you're shy :o)

I hope you can all make good use of the tool. The more students record their descriptions the more examples (ideas) they will have.

SUGGESTED ACTIVITY:1. Show the voicethread in class. Show the first picture (second slide) and ask sts to brainstorm vocabulary they can use to describe the picture (in pairs)2. Sts write down a picture description for the picture. (the script should have no more than a minute ) (Teacher should be going round the room monitoring)3. Ask St A from the pair to practise reading the picture description to his/her partner.4. Get some volunteers to record their picture descriptions in class with a microphone to the voicethread.5. Assign more picture description for Homework.

October 6, 2009

These are wonderful teacher training videos I'd like to share with you.

"An innovative offering from the Office of English Language Programs, Shaping the Way We Teach English, is a 14-module teacher training video series developed and produced in cooperation with the University of Oregon. "

October 3, 2009

Brazil was thrilled yesterday with the honour of hosting the 2016 Olympic Games. We all know of the social problems we still have to face but we also know that we are capable of hosting such an event with our "hearts and soul" as President Lula said.

While searching tweets about the 2016 Olympic Games I came across some articles and videos that could be used in class.

1. For this first video which is partly in Portuguese and then in English (the song), you could have students write down the sports they see while they watch the video.

2. The second video is narrated in English but shows labels with the names of the sport facilities. You could ask students which area will hold what sport with questions such as: Where will athletic competitions take place? And the opening ceremony? What about the marathon?

Of course, as all Brazilians have been discussing the pros and cons of holding the games in Brazil, you could propose a discussion among students.

WELCOME!

I'm Ana Maria Menezes. An EFL teacher, teacher developer and online moderator. An enthusiastic blogger and curious researcher. M.A. in Linguistic Studies with special interest in teacher development in online environments.